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If I may, these threads always follow the theme of C4D staying in the forefront of the technology on pretty much EVERYTHING. We want it to be the best or at least rated in the top 3 of every possible element of digital content creation: modeling, sculpting, painting, texturing, rendering, EFX, dynamics...the list just goes on and on. And for what Maxon charges, that is not an unfair request. But history has shown that Maxon can NOT keep C4D current in every area. Maxon knows it so they have started to acquire or license other technology: Redshift and Ministry of Flats to name a few. Or, they have developers spin off and create outstanding plugins like X-Particles. One question though: Why do we keep thinking that every aspect of DCC software needs to be developed in house? Far more critical and larger applications than C4D are not 100% developed in-house. Whole sections of networking IOS software are outsourced so why can't Maxon follow that model as well? The jewel in Maxon's crown should be their architecture, the UX design standards and quality requirements. And then rather than have people writing the code, they have people writing the standards that contract software developers need to follow. This should be happening already but honestly it doesn't feel that way given how certain aspects of the program are aging so badly. This may also be why Blender is so successful. Everything is outsourced. They have a whole community of developers working to grow that program. If this is NOT happening already or is against Maxon's culture or goes against their standards on safe guarding their intellectual property, then what I would like to see is a greater and deeper partnership with these third party plugin developers such that their plugins follow the same internal logical consistency as the rest of C4D. Everything works together so you barely even know you are crossing from C4D domain into a plugin domain. Load the plugin and the tools that go with that plugin just appear in the standard tool pallet along with the native C4D tools. All the plugins work as additional modifiers that can be stacked in the Object Manager rather than have their own separate interface. Some do that already, but to be a Maxon certified plugin (do they still even have that designation?) you need to follow these standard UI rules. Also, and this a big one, there is one single NODE editor for anything requiring a nodal interface: Xpresso, material nodes, scene nodes, Redshift nodes, Plus tags that allow you to mix and match shaders, lights, cameras, UV's, weight maps, etc created by various 3rd party developers with the render engine of your choice. Everything is interoperable and exchangeable. The core C4D application becomes the tonic water in your software cocktail. All the separate modules just flow together into one well designed cohesive application. Maybe the new core and scene nodes are the first step to make this happen...but honestly, I can't see it going that way. Finally, coupled with all this there is a huge price drop for the main application. If we have to buy plugins to round out the application then you can't be charging us full price. Honestly, that is why I hate subscriptions. You have to pay yearly just to use a program that history has shown can't keep current with the rapid pace of technological change in all areas. For some, the wait for those changes will be longer than others but they keep paying. Something's got to give...either how Maxon manages their development or how they manage their upgrade policy...but somethings got to change because Blender really does look more attractive with each release. Dave

Previously I've dabbled with stepped pendulums, just affected by gravity, where the wire lengths increase in a linear manner - you can get nice sine wave type patterns eg here. I once saw a guy on TV - Stephen Fry - with a multi pendulum model doing just this, and he casually made a throwaway remark 'of course if you let it run long enough, the pendulums return to their original start positions' ie in a straight line. I thought 'that can't be true'. I tried (in C4D) all combinations of wire lengths and increments, but all I got was straight line start > sine waves > chaotic movement I once let a sim run for about 75,000F - but just got chaos and no alignment. Then I saw some math online that explained the align trick... I chose a time period for alignment - 20 sec Using the standard pendulum formula, I calculated the wire length to make the longest pendulum do 18 complete swings (period - T) in 20 secs I set the length of the next (shorter) pendulum to do 19T in 20 secs then the next pendulum to do 20T in 20 secs next 21T in 20 secs etc up to 27T in 20 sec for the 10th pendulum In theory, the pendulums should align every 20 sec. I set it running and the alignment was close, but not good enough. The problem was that the simple pendulum formula only works for small angles - it uses the approximation (in radians) of sin(x) = x which falls down over about 10 degrees. The math for large angles is quite complex - I decided to manually tweak my computed values until the weights lined up. So the final result was down to a mixture of python and intuition/guesswork. Works quite well. the pendulums line up every 20s - blink and you'll miss it

As far as basic competitive feature sets go, I hope R25 will finally have a decent market competitive built-in renderer. They started work on implementing ProRender, got rid of that, and now users are left hanging without a decent modern fast GPU render solution replacement. It is rather surprising that C4D is the only DCC that requires its users to invest in a third-party/external render solution to gain access to a modern up-to-date (fast) renderer. (well, there *is* Centileo, which is free.) Maxon should really just integrate Redshift in this upcoming version (based on history, management may decide to do exactly this, but increase the base package rental fee 😜 )

Thanks kbar, I checked out what you mentioned regarding the "Surface Distance", and that is indeed what I was looking for. I must have missed this, since this is option is only available on the "Grab" brush and not the other ones for some reason. Regardless I'm glad to know about this function and I'm grateful you pointed it out . Concerning what you mentioned about the sculpting layers, while I appreciate that you've expanded C4D's sculpting toolset, I still don't think it answers why C4D itself doesn't ship with these features, especially since the sculpting module was introduced way back in R14 and has remained virtually untouched since then. I believe that remeshing is an expected feature for modern digital sculpting, and really should be included in any self respecting software that wants to stay competitive and advertises a fully functional sculpting workflow, as opposed to an addendum toolset to modeling. I've experimented with the "Remesh" and found the results to be very unimpressive, especially compared to the auto-topo solutions from Zbrush, 3dcoat, mudbox, the Exoside plugin, and even blender. My point is not to bash Maxon's efforts, but rather to point out that they've allowed themselves to fall way behind the trend, and if they want to catch up and stay competitive then they've got to step it up, especially considering that they introduced sculpting almost ten years ago. As far as Bodypaint is concerned, I respectfully reject the notion that C4D users are disinterested in Bodypaint and it's future development. Your experience with your "Symmetry" addition and it's dramatic change in downloads ratio, should tell you that Bodypaint users are not disinterested, but rather unwilling to pay any extra to gain basic features that are standard in other packages and should come with no additional fee. Also, the idea that Bodypaint was abandoned because users expect live feedback confuses me. Many years ago, Bodypaint was a prominent staple in professional pipelines and had a strong foothold in the industry; Why would it be traded for other programs that are identically deficient? The fact is that Bodypaint has been neglected for years, and I remember 3dKiwi ranting about this years ago and still nothing's changed even up until now. In fact, his Bodypaint tutorial course from about (over) ten years ago is probably still completely accurate. Substance is a relatively new software, but I remember even a few years ago, when hand-painted textures were a bigger market, 3dCoat was much more prolific than Bodypaint, and offered a much more feature-rich solution for painting. Even today 3dCoat continues to stay competitive with the integration of a BPR workflow, smart materials, and masks etc. Blender has also become a much better solution for painting and general workflow, is constantly being updated and developed, and for many is the Swiss Army knife tool that a lot of studios are adopting for the majority of their work. And is also free. I want to reiterate that my intention is not to "hate" on Maxon, but rather to voice my criticism and hope that they decide to up their game. Competition is what motivates the industry, and those program devs that are content to stay in their respective lanes or get too full of themselves, will fall by the wayside to other packages that are eager to dominate and become number one; Zbrush, Houdini, and Blender are good examples of upward trending, highly competitive programs.

Could you explain the "Surface" option and how that applies to sculpting. I might not be getting exactly what it is you are after. Since the sculpting brushes are surface based. They don't just take what is under the brush preview. It looks at the connected polygons on the surface of the model and if they are with the radius of the brush then the vertices are affected. There is also the "Surface Distance" option on the grab brush which works a little different as well, it walks the surface of the connected edges and calculates the amount of distance travelled from the centre hit point. Also if you want a duplicate layers option I added it to my own sculpting brush tools if you need it: https://www.plugins4d.com/Product/SculptProjectionBrush I have asked people a few times what they would want from the Sculpting system as far as additions go. But I don't hear anything at all other than wanting auto retopology and meshing tools. Which aren't actually related to the sculpting tools. And since R23 there is a new remeshing algorithm built in called "Remesh". Which got improved further in S24 with more options.

I was pretty deeply involved with the beta testing of Terraform (T4D) before it was sold to Insydium. I'm looking forward to seeing what they've done with it. Yes the competition is steep in landscape generation tools - DEM Earth, Worldcreator, Gaea, Houdini, etc etc. but to be fair I think T4D has it's niche. It's a lower cost, simpler product that can build 'realistic enough' landscapes quickly and easily. It integrates perfectly with C4D features such as fields and It's very art directable. The one key area it was missing was hydraulic erosion. I'll be interested to see how well the Insydium system works.